A technology disclosed herein relates to a file management performed by a computer, in particular, a technique of enhancing an effect of file sharing by making it easy for as many users as possible to find newly created files in a file sharing environment in which a large volume of files are classified and stored in a plurality of file servers and folders.
For management of a large volume of files, it is important to assure “ease of finding a file” which allows a person who needs a file to find the file as necessary.
Up to now, the files have been organized by use of a concept of hierarchical grouping such as folders or directories. The folder has a human-readable name. To store a new file in a file server and share the new file with another, it is important to store the new file in a folder as related to the contents of the new file as possible in order to improve the ease of finding a file.
However, an increase in scale of a folder hierarchy due to: an increase in the number of folders; an increase in the depth of the folder hierarchy; use of a plurality of file servers in order to enhance a storage capacity; or the like causes a user to take a longer time to find a suitable folder for storing a file, which leads a problem that a work efficiency becomes worse.
Methods of solving this problem include a file search technique. For example, the file search technique makes it possible to find a necessary file by causing a search engine to search a plurality of folders for a file instead of storing files by classifying the files into folders.
According to the file search technique, the search engine server creates an index database for all files stored in a file server by extracting keywords from the files. Then, the user issues a search request with a designated keyword to the search engine server. The search engine server searches the index database, and returns a list of files that contains the keyword to the user. This allows the user to find a necessary file through the keyword search, thereby improving the ease of finding a file.
The file search technique is disclosed in, for example, JP 2000-172711 A, JP 07-085072 A, “Spotlight” (Apple Inc.) retrieved on Oct. 5, 2007 online through the Internet at the URL http://images.apple.com/jp/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_Spotlight_TB.pdf, and “Apple—Mac OS X Leopard—New Features—Finder” (Apple Inc.) retrieved on Oct. 30, 2007 online through the Internet at the URL http://www.apple.com/jp/macosx/features/finder.html.
In JP 2000-172711 A and JP 07-085072 A, used in a state where a plurality of document databases including a search engine exist is an intermediate database for indicating relationships between search keywords and the document databases. The intermediate database transfers a search request to one of the plurality of document databases, thereby improving a search efficiency. To that end, JP 07-085072 A describes the step of subjecting a document analysis on a plurality of databases (DBs) and calculating attributes of the DBs in comparison with a dictionary. Further, JP 07-085072 A describes the step of, when a new DB is added, checking the attribute of the new DB as well and also adding the new DB to the selection target DBs (refer to the paragraphs 0046 to 0048 and FIG. 11 of JP 07-085072 A).
In “Spotlight”, a plurality of files containing a previously designated search keyword are retrieved. The retrieved plurality of files are grouped into a virtual folder and listed. According to “Spotlight”, it is possible to find a newly created file without the need of time and labor for searching for the file.
According to “Apple—Mac OS X Leopard—New Features—Finder”, search results can be saved for later use. By using prepared search keywords, further more search results can be obtained while saving time and labor.